The Third Time is a Charm
by D.D. Casale
Summary: If the third time is a charm, what’s the fourth time supposed to be?


**The T****hird Time is a Charm**  
by Andressa Casale

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Lost, I wrote this for my fun only.

**Rating: **Rated T for some violence.

**Author's Note:** This one is for KaydenceRei, I had this crazy idea and she encouraged me to write it. This is a really dark fic, but I sometimes get in the mood to write one of these. I hope you guys like it, and don't mind any grammar mistakes you might come upon. English is not my first language. Flashbacks are in italics.

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"What are you doing?" I ask looking curiously at the younger woman who is handcuffed to me.

"Whoever dragged us out here left a trail," Kate points at the floor and I realize that I shouldn't have left a trail, but how was I supposed to know that Kate was an experienced tracker? "It'll lead us back to where we came from. Let's go."

I can't let Kate lead us back to the barracks, that's not the plan. We are supposed to go to the beach, I'm supposed to win her trust. So I do the most logical thing. I stay put and pull on the cuffs to keep Kate from going anywhere. She looks at me, I can see the fury in her eyes. She doesn't like handcuffs because it keeps her from running away. And she hates the fact that it's me who she can't run away from at least for now.

"It's gonna rain." I tell her, noticing the dark cloud above us. "Don't you think we should wait til morning?"

"No," she says bitterly and pulls on the cuffs like a stubborn child.

I try to fight the feeling that I'm the grown up here. Because it sounds stuck-up even in my head. I never realized that the age difference between us would make me feel like this, I'm not even that much older than her, she's 27 and I'm 34. But as we walk in silence and I look at her I can't help but see a scared little child.

"Why?" She finally breaks the silence.

"Why what?" I pretend I don't know what she means.

"Why would they handcuff you to me and then drag us all the way out into the jungle?"

She still isn't found of the handcuffs and I smirk slightly. This was all Ben's idea, but I couldn't tell her that Ben wanted to make her feel vulnerable. I couldn't tell her that this was all part of his scheme to manipulate her into thinking that I was left behind too. That I was vulnerable just like her, to make her feel sorry for me.

"Ben has a thing for mind games," I tell her, and it wasn't at all a lie. But Ben's plan had a flaw. Kate would never feel sorry for me.

"That why he left you behind?" I look at her studying her face. Could it be possible that she really believes I was left behind too?

"Do we really have to talk?"

"Nope!" Yes, she does look like a child to me, she even talks like one.

We stop when we hear a thunder crackling. We look up to the sky almost in unison as the rain starts to pour down our faces. I look at her again, with an I-told-you-so expression on my face. And she turns to leave.

"Come on, if the trail gets wet I'll lose it." I can't believe that she isn't willing to announce defeat.

"I hope you're not dragging me all the back there with you for him."

"Excuse me?!" She asks annoyed, she knows very well that it's Jack whom I'm talking about.

"I hope you're not going back, for Jack." I know I was annoying her. "Because I was standing right there, when he told you not to come back. And now that you've ruined his chance to get off the Island..."

I suddenly feel rather than see Kate's fist meeting my face painfully. I didn't expect her to just attack me, but I guess I had pushed her too far. I quickly try to get the upper hand in our fight, but Kate is really strong and has me straddled with my back to her, she twists my left arm to my back.

"You done?" She asks, but I don't know what to answer. I have no idea what she's asking. All I can think of is the familiar and painful throbbing on my shoulder. "I SAID ARE YOU DONE?!"

She pushes my arm harder behind my back and all I can do is cry out.

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_I remember the first time I dislocated my shoulder. It was the most painful experience I had ever been through up until that point of my life. I was just little five year old, wearing a pretty pink dress, and my hair was pulled into pigtails._

_We were out on the park having a picnic back when our family was still happy together. My father was lying on a blanket on the grass, with his eyes closed probably dozing off, while my mother was concentrated on her book._

_Rachel and I were playing on the playground, we always liked to come to the park. We liked to pretend that we were astronauts, those were the best years, when our imagination took us place I now only go in my dreams. We had this little game, we would pump as hard as we could to get the swing really high up in the air, and then jump. For a few seconds we could fly as if we were in space and there was no gravity._

_My sister was four years older than me, and while I was a skinny five year old, she was a strong nine year old. Rachel would sometimes give me pig back ride, or spin me. That day I asked her to spin me around by the arm._

_She held me by my left hand and spun me around, just like I had asked her to. In seconds, my giggles turned into an agonizing scream. And all I remember was Rachel's guilty and terrified face. _

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Sometimes, when you're in an accident, you only actually feel the pain after everything happened, after the adrenaline was gone. Yes, you scream, because you're afraid, but not because it hurts. Like what just happened now, I can still hear my screaming echoing in the jungle. Kate is totally docile now, I can't see her face, but I can feel the guilty in her actions.

"I... I'm sorry, I, I didn't mean to..." She says desperately, I can see she wants to ask me if I'm all right but she's too head strong to do it. I'm going to tell her that it's ok, when a noise cuts me.

It's the damn monster, I've never seen him before. And I used to think that it was just make believe. Something Ben came up with to keep us from going into the jungle. Like on the movie The Village. But as I hear it roaring powerfully, I realize I was wrong.

"What the hell is that?!" I ask stunned as Kate moves up.

"Get up." She orders me, looking deep into my eyes.

"You dislocated my shoulder!" I'm not going to give into her orders.

"GET, UP!" She yells at me and I can see the urgency in her eyes.

I pull myself up with all the strength I can muster. As we run for cover I'm totally aware that my shoulder is hurting, and I can't help but whine a little, even though it makes me look weak. I don't care what Kate thinks of me.

"Quick, in here!" Kate keeps rushing me, and I'm glad that with the rain falling she can't notice the tears of pain in my eyes. "Come on. Get in." We arrive at some trees, I can't think straight I just let her guide me. "Come on, get down, get down." We sit down on the floor.

"What... the hell?" I ask her, trying to spot the thing that was making all the noises.

"Shh... up." She tells me, covering my mouth with her hands for emphasis.

I can feel her shaking, she's really scared of this thing. I would tell her that everything would be ok, but she just wants me to shut up and I comply. She takes her hands off of me and I try to look outside. But it's too dark, and I can't see a thing.

The screeching sounds get near and near, I feel my heart beating fast, I'm afraid to even breathe and disturb the beast. I don't want to bring its attention to us. Then all of a sudden it starts to flash us with blinding lights. It's like it's around me. In the flashes of light I see my memories, they are more painful to watch then my dislocated shoulder. I cover my eyes in shock, hoping that it would leave soon, and it did.

I let go of a breath I hadn't realize I was holding. I try to find the monster as it went away, it's like he disappeared. I'm left with silence and Kate's desperate breathing.

"Are we safe?" I ask her, she seems to know more about the monster than me.

"You tell me," was all she said before we fell in complete silence.

All I could think of was the excruciating pain on my shoulder.

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_I had forgotten how much a dislocated __shoulder hurts until it was dislocated for the second time, almost twenty years after the first. I was lying on bed reading a book, my husband was brushing his teeth getting ready for bed, when his voice reached my ear._

"_Juliet, what's this?" I could sense that he was angry and when I lowered my book to look at him I could feel my heart stop beating._

_He was standing on the doorway holding my birth control pills. He was studying my reaction carefully, and I knew I was pale because I had forgotten how to breathe. For long six months all he had talked about was having a baby, what he would name it, how he would design the nursery. He was fifteen years older them me, his biological clock was ticking fast._

_But I wasn't ready for a baby, especially not to have one with him. I loved Edmund, but sometimes, usually when I did something to upset him, the look he would give me never failed to frighten me. And I was right to be afraid of him, I had just never experienced the full force of his anger before. _

_So when he decided that we needed to have a baby, he stopped using protection. That was the same day I started taking pills in secret. But he wasn't supposed to have known, he must have gone through my stuff and then I was looking like a deer caught on the headlights. I didn't know what to say, so I just said nothing._

_He threw the pills on the ground and moved closer to me quickly, he hit my face with rage, it was totally unexpected, but I didn't scream. I put my hands on where he had hit me and looked at him shocked. He had never done that before and I wasn't strong enough to hold back my tears. He was furious, and it scared me._

"_I've had enough of you, Juliet!" He screamed at me, and I wondered how long it would take for the neighbors to call the police._

_He grabbed my left wrist and pulled me to the ground. I gasped with surprise, I tried to pull away from him, but he was too strong. He soon had hit me on the face again, hit my body where he thought I deserved, I really tried my best to break away, but his grip on my wrist was too firm. He beat me and kicked me, and I refused to scream, I didn't want to give him that satisfaction._

_But I did cry out that night, when he twisted my left arm on my back and pushed it too far. My scream was first a reflex. He let go of me then, I looked up at him and he was just as scared as I was. I didn't know what hurt more, the constant pain on my shoulder, or the humiliation he had just put me through. I screamed again, when he held my left hand and pushed up, putting my shoulder back in._

"_You'll stop taking the pills!" He told me coldly, and left me there to cry._

_The police never showed up that night. It seems nobody really cares about what happens in the next house. But somehow that night was important for me. Because in the next morning I packed my things and left Edmund. _

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"Do you think it's gone?" I asked worried that maybe that thing was still out there just waiting for us to come out of our hiding place. "Are we safe?"

"Are you serious?" Of course she doesn't believe me. "You've never seen that?"

I really want to be kind to her, to earn her trust like Ben asked me to, but the way she is acting is driving me crazy. "Oh if you don't believe me, you can always pull my other shoulder out of its socket."

"I was, I wasn't trying to..." She says with guilty evident on her voice.

"Don't flatter yourself." I say trying to move into a more comfortable position because it was obvious we were not going anywhere until it stopped raining. "This is the fourth time it's been dislocated." I press on my left arm to sit up only to hurt my shoulder even more. I hate to have to ask Kate for help, but it's unbearable. "Give me your hand!"

"Why?"

"'Cause I want you to pop it back in."

"No, I'm not gonna..." She says, and I can't tell if she doesn't want to help me because she hates me or because she is afraid.

Either way, I don't care! "You're gonna!" I tell her sternly. I'm tired of her acting like a child, like she is the only victim on this whole mess. "Right now it feels like there's broken glass under my skin," I explain to her, and I can't help but add, "and if it weren't for you, I would be on my way home right now."

"Jack told me not to come back to protect me." I wasn't talking about Jack, but she somehow managed to make it about him. "Because he didn't want me to get hurt."

How dumb is she? Does she really think so? "Is that what you think?

"Yeah that's what I think."

"We have cameras on the cages, Kate." She looks at me without getting the connection. "All of them. He saw you, you and Sawyer." I watch as all the wrong emotions show on her face. "The reason Jack told you not to come back, wasn't because he didn't want you to get hurt, it was because you broke his heart!" She doesn't say anything, just looks at me trying to figure out if I was telling the truth or not. "So, grab my wrist. Push up, and twist!"

She thinks for a minute, and then does as I asked. I let out another scream that echoed into the jungle. Soon we were in silence again. I hope that it wouldn't bring the monster back again.

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_How did I let myself get involved into this mess?_

_Th__at place was sick, those people were evil, and the worst thing was that I had nowhere to run. I was sitting here, waiting for the trail to begin. "The Others vs Juliet Burke" I chuckled quietly. It was interesting that I could still make a joke. Well, if I was going to be executed, at least I wouldn't have to be a prisoner there anymore. At least something good came out of it._

_These people we__re hypocrites, I hated them. They were judging me for having killed one of them. As if they weren't horrible human beings. As if they had never killed people. What kind of people kidnapped children and scared pregnant women? _

_Yes, I was a murderer! I had killed a man who would have killed an innocent man for revenge. Because Kwon had killed Colleen in self defense, because Colleen was Danny's wife, because Ford was part of Kwon's group. Did it make it ok for Danny to kill Ford? It didn't make any sense to me. _

_And even if I tried to talk Danny out of doing it, would he even have listened to me? What should I have done, then? Watch him as he took an innocent man's life? Let an innocent man die?_

_I didn't care if they would execute me, at least I would die being a hero, at least I would have saved an innocent man, and helped his people get away from there._

_And then there was__ desperate a knock on the door, I watched Isabel go out, when she came back in I tried to see who was outside and my eyes locked briefly with Jack's. Isabel announced that Ben had commuted my sentence and that I was going to be marked. I didn't know what she meant by that, but it couldn't be a good thing._

_They handcuffed my arms behind my back and escorted me out. We walked for a long time to the place where the execution was going to take place. I wondered if they were playing with my mind, but I didn't dare to ask questions. _

_I saw__ Anderson holding a metal stick to a fire and my stomach started to turn with realization, I couldn't believe they were actually going to mark me, literally! Pryce came over to me, he smirked at the fear expressed on my face. I looked over at Tom, but he looked down at the floor avoiding me, then he turned his back and walked away._

"_Hey!" I exclaimed as I felt Pryce tugging on my shirt._

"_Things will be easier if you collaborate, Juliet!" He said coldly, but I could notice the amusement in his tone._

_He finally ripped my shirt apart. H__e pulled the fabric away, pulled it down my arms to get caught between my wrists where my hands were still cuffed together. I felt completely embarrassed as most of the people I had come to known over the last three years watched me as I stood in the middle of them almost half-naked._

_Suddenly Pryce pushed__ me violently into a tree trunk, he pulled my arms to the right side firmly and I started to feel the familiar pain on my shoulder. I closed my eyes hard when I felt Pryce's hand zipping down the fly on my jeans, a tear fell down my face, I was completely scared, I had no idea what they intend to do to me._

_He pulled__ my jeans down just a little, and then I felt something burning me on the small of my back, I cried out in pain, I struggled to break free, I tried to pull my arms away, it only made Pryce pull them harder. Then I felt it again, as my shoulder was dislocated for the third time. Anderson finally stopped his torture, I had finally been marked. Pryce let go of arm._

_People started to walk back to the main building, the show was over, I just closed my eyes again, I cried, I sobbed. It hurt so much, both my shoulder and my back. It was a long minute before a felt someone moving behind me. I hadn't even moved. _

"_I'm sorry, July!" Tom's voice wa__s mortified. He grabbed my hands to take off my handcuffs and I whined. "What?" He asked quickly._

"_My shoulder…" My voice was__ strained with tears. "It's dislocated!"_

"_Oh," he said sweetly. After he took off the cuffs, he helped put my shoulder back in._

_He gave me a new shirt and I put it on, we walked back to the main building._

"_Shephard has missed your sandwiches," Tom said trying to cheer me up, I gave him a small broken smile, "he said he liked that you grilled them. He's asked about you."_

"_Thanks," I said looking down at the floor, trying to tell him that I didn't want to talk._

"_You can see him when we get back!" I just nodded my head._

_We were in silence after that. I was glad he was by my side. Even though I hated pretty much everyone there; except for the innocent children, Alex included; I was happy that he was keeping me company. It reminded me that there still were people capable of kindness in that awful place. _

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She didn't say anything to me at all. She is probably upset about what I said regarding Jack. I didn't say anything either, I kept wondering, if the third time is a charm, what's the fourth time supposed to be? I hope that it doesn't bring bad luck, because if it does, then I'm screwed for real.

"How's your shoulder?" She finally asks long after the rain was gone.

"Awesome," I say sarcastically.

"Then let's get going."

We pull ourselves up, and just like all the other times I had dislocated my shoulder, I move on with my life, the pain on my should was just a little reminder that what doesn't kill me, makes me stronger.


End file.
